You think Jon Sumrall was pumped up after the Ole Miss win? You ain't seen nothing yet!
The Florida Gators coach was jacked to the max after his team went into Austin and knocked off No. 7 Texas, possibly ending the Longhorns CFP hopes for the second straight season.
“We played about as awful as we could in the first quarter, but we kept fighting,” Sumrall said. “We didn’t do that the last couple of weeks to be honest with you. When things got tough, we flinched the last couple of weeks. Our team grew today because we fought.”
Jon Sumrall is fired up and Florida is far from dead
There were plenty of reasons to write the Gators off. They were on the heels of consecutive blowout losses at the hands of Missouri and South Carolina. The injuries were mounting, with Aaron Philo out with a shoulder injury, Vernell Brown III missing his third straight game and other offensive skill players like Jadan Baugh and Bailey Stockton all dealing with something that forced them to miss snaps.
But Florida is different under Sumrall in his first season. The Gators have been down the past few weeks, but they aren't staying down. With a brutal stretch of games that will last until mid-November, Florida had to win a couple of games as underdogs to get this season back on track.
Well, how do you like the Gators now? After falling behind 17-3, they scored 24 straight points to put Texas on the ropes and the defense made a stop on fourth down to ice the game. The defense showed up, harassing Arch Manning all game and destroying his confidence with each sack. LJ McCray finally looked like a five-star recruit, leading the charge with 1.5 sacks and 2.5 tackles for loss. All together, the defense had five sacks and 11 tackles for loss.
Everyone needed to come together to complete this upset. Baugh struggled to find much room against the Longhorns defense, but he grinded out 91 yards on 25 carries. Tramell Jones looked composed in his first start, throwing two touchdowns and he did not commit a turnover.
"It wasn't perfect, he knows that. He missed some things, but he battled," Sumrall said in his postgame comments as he gave Jones a big bear hug.
He battled. Florida battled and, just like that, the 2026 season is far from lost. The Gators will get a week to rest and recover and then bring on the Georgia Bulldogs.
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